Taoism

The Truth About Strength and Courage

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Our goal in this world should not be to dominate and control, but rather, to empower and encourage the unique qualities of every living being. We should seek to allow the best versions of ourselves to develop and thrive and encourage those around us to do the same.  I’ve said it before, our diversity in thinking, experience, ways of knowing, and qualities are the greatest tools human beings have. After all, if we try to tackle the same problem with the same approach time and again, all we do is make ourselves miserable and the problem still won’t be solved. Throughout history, the greatest achievements have always come from collaboration across diverse viewpoints. The greatest works of art, the greatest developments in science and technology, and the answers to our most difficult problems were all solved by applying diverse thinking and skills and collaborating with others.

So why do we fight so hard against diversity and difference? Why do we so often seek uniformity?

The answer is simple, fear and cowardice. 

The concepts of strength and courage have, for too long, been equated with the ability to dominate, to control, to create order and hierarchy. But neither strength nor courage is really about these things. These notions are falsehoods perpetuated by longstanding narratives and myths that reinforce existing structures of domination and control. Essentially, the reason we’ve come to feel that strength and courage are about these things is that those in power have used that narrative to legitimize their abusive system.

What do I mean by an abusive system? 

Regardless of which political or economic system you employ, it becomes abusive the moment that it creates a situation that takes away people’s agency. This isn’t an argument for libertarianism though. This isn’t an attempt to say we should undo government regulation. There are many ways you can take away people’s access to society, and deregulation of the private sector and creating a situation where those with money and power have no accountability to the people they impact with their choices can be just as destructive as systems with governments that have too much power and too much invasion of your privacy.

An abusive system is one where a large portion of the population struggles to meet their basic needs and are chasing after safety, security, health, and must suppress their skills and talents to survive.

Any system that causes suppression of our creativity, our dignity, and eats up most of our free time, is an abusive system.

An authoritarian government is an abusive system.

A system where a small minority of people control the majority of resources is an abusive system.

A system where you are discriminated against because of either outward features or inward abilities, is an abusive system.

A system where there is only one right way of thinking and there is no opportunity to play with ideas is an abusive system.

Anything that stifles agency and creativity is abusive. Nor can we forget that freedom must be partnered with accountability. For if your freedom erodes the freedoms of others, and there are no consequences, this too creates abusive systems. Freedom without accountability is nothing more than a weapon wielded by those who are already powerful. Freedom without accountability has the possibility of becoming tyranny.

The American ethos is one that is supposed to value ingenuity, persistence, creativity, innovation, and the opportunity for individuals to improve themselves. We often point to the narrative of bootstraps, one that suggests that with hard work, anyone can make something of their life. But the sad truth is, we don’t have a system that values that at all. We have a system that uses the idea of the self-made person to suppress the best qualities of the American Ethos (See my posts How to Understand Poverty and Success is Luck for exactly why this is true) and further empowers those who already have wealth and power in our society. The current incarnation of this has been heightened since the end of the 1970s, but certainly is not unique in the history of this country or indeed across quite a few cultures. Though, as David Graber and David Wengrow very successfully demonstrate in their book The Dawn of Everything, nothing about this system is natural or inevitable.

The thing is, we could absolutely cultivate those values. We could create situations where anyone who wants to pursue their dream and work hard, has the support to be successful. But as long as we measure success by the ability to dominate and exploit (basically wealth as a measure of success) we can’t have those things at all. As long as we hold up excess, self-interest, and competition as the cornerstones of our system, the majority of the population will never have the ability to meet their potential. Competition isn’t inherently bad, but when the result of competition is the destitution of some of the population, then we have missed the point. We have simply replicated the pattern of domination and control.

What does this have to do with strength and courage?

In order to justify an abusive system, you have to create propaganda. As Michael Foucault once stated, (paraphrased from his book Discipline and Punish) every system of power has the same problem. It must seek to enact that power at the lower possible cost to those who wield it. In other words, the best way to keep control is to convince people to police themselves, to enforce the morals and ideas that allow you to maintain an abusive system.

The concept of masculinity has been deeply tied to notions of strength and courage. We see action heroes in media dominating people around them. We have competitive sports that, even when they are about teamwork, often highlight who can do the most damage. We see propaganda on news outlets and in commercials about what it means to be a “real man.” The work of sociologist Jackson Katz looks at how we use these ideas to reinforce an abusive uncaring system that hurts men and honestly, everyone else. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend his documentary “Tough Guise 2” which further elaborates these points and offers significant evidence. He also has a body of written work and research worth considering.

Strength has nothing to do with whose ass you can kick. Strength and courage are about adapting to whatever circumstances you find yourself in and finding a way to press forward. Strength and courage are not about the individual, but about creating connections with others to navigate through difficulty. There is very little in this world you can do entirely on your own. You need other people to help you to achieve your goals and dreams. It takes courage to take a risk and go after your dream, but it also takes support from others. Often, people can’t take risks unless they have the right kind of support or circumstances.

To open, to be vulnerable, to admit when you are wrong, and to journey into the unknown, this is the nature of true courage. And when you encounter things that make you uncomfortable, strength is the ability to persist and the attempt to understand. Strength is not lashing out in fear. Strength is not painting a picture in your mind of why someone is your enemy, why someone is wrong, and/or how you must dominate them to prove yourself right. Strength and courage are doing your work honestly, sharing your knowledge, and then stepping back and allowing your contribution to speak for yourself. Strength is embracing the truth, that all beings are our relatives, and have been our mothers in the past. For there is no place where we begin and end, we are an ever-linked and interconnected part of the whole being that we call life.

A Final Frontier

/ michaelkilman / 3 Comments

We are, each of us, a little universe. — Neil deGrasse Tyson

Photo by Roberto Nickson from Pexels

I have always gazed at the stars, longing with the beating of my heart for some greater connection to our cosmos. My childhood was filled with science fiction, astronomy, and glow in the dark stickers of constellations on my bedroom ceiling that I spent hours arranging. Even as an adult, I yearn to see our planet from above.

Space is potential and possibility, a garden of infinity. It is a great treasure of wonder and knowledge. The Universe is mostly space, and yet at our scale, it appears to be so crammed with life, and stuff, and objects that we can often feel claustrophobic, especially in our cities. Everywhere you go, there you are, bumping into things and people. Then, you scale up, and even the distances from here to the next nearest star system, are vast and unimaginable. And what’s in that space between the Stars?

Nothing?

No, not nothing. Potential.

In the last several years, I’ve been asking myself. Why do I desire the stars so desperately? Is it my curiosity of the unknown? Am I hungry to see with my own eyes, the grandeur shown to us by instruments like the Hubble telescope? Maybe it’s just too many hours consuming Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, the Expanse and countless other favorite sci-if films, shows, and books.

Is it that final frontier I crave? Is it an escape from the present and difficult state of humanity? Am I running away? Am I a coward?

What is it?

And then, I remember this quote from one of my favorite books, The Tao Te Ching,

“Do you want to improve the world?

I don’t think it can be done.

The world is sacred.

It can’t be improved.

If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.

If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.”

I always pushed back against that quote, especially during my time as an activist, but what I have come to understand is that quote is about space. It is about potential and possibility, about the desperate need to turn inward and consider the space between thoughts and emotions. We run around trying to fix things in our lives for the wrong reasons. Our rush to change things, is a kind of running away, a distraction from what we really need.

Many of us run our lives ragged. This culture, this American drive for more, tells us that if we work hard, that if we grind and grind and grind, somehow we will come out on top. But it’s not true. Most people will stay in the same position they are born in and in fact, according to the research of American Economist Raj Chetty, social mobility is far more limited in this country than we think.

It is so easy to get lost in the hustle, the desire to improve our space in this place. We are gig workers chasing a way to eek out a living on top of our full time jobs. Though we may do everything right, we still fail. It feels, overwhelming and sometimes pointless. We drown in our desire, filled to the brim with a hunger that can never be satisfied.

Why can’t we just breathe and be?

Why do we chase the American dream? Why do we idolize those who have so much? Why do so many of us play the lottery and fantasize about what we would do with all that money? How do millions of people get sucked into Multi-Level Marketing schemes? Why do books like The Secret or Think and Grow Rich sell so well to those dispossessed in this capitalist system?

The answer is, that what we really crave is freedom and potential.

We feel that if we had the economic resources, the space, and time, we could become our best selves. But we don’t have to go anywhere to be our best selves. If we want to change the world, the best place to begin is within. We only become our best selves by making space in our minds and hearts, by contemplation and learning from our mistakes.

What comes from working on ourselves, from engaging in that final frontier within? If we look at history, at the great periods of science and learning, we see that diversity, contemplation, exploring our humanity, and questioning everything, lead to the illumination of the human experience. We made progress when we were allowed to play with knowledge and people who were different than us.

When I read about the International Space Station, and the cooperation between many countries that it requires, all in the name of something bigger, I feel hope for our species. Here, in space, is another place for great human questions and the power of diverse thinking. Space within, and space out there, are both necessary for humanity to grow beyond the shackles of materialism and empty promises in ad campaigns.

What I really want from this world most is the opportunity to explore beyond the bounds of greed and the lust for more. Space to me, represents everything wonderful about what it means to be human. Exploration, discovery, research and the pursuit of knowledge are, in my mind, the greatest of goals.

On our planet, and in particular in the United States, there is so little space for poetry, sculpture, theater, and other wondrous explorations of our inner lives. If it cannot easily be commodified and turn a tidy profit, it’s considered to have little importance. We see the demoralization of artists, writers, poets, and scientists. People who dedicate their lives to trying to understand the big questions, rather than the pursuit of a stock portfolio, are dismissed as idealists at best, and unproductive leaches on society at worst. We have become the dispossessed of our humanity. What happened to the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake?

Yet, what did you consume during quarantine? What treasures did you find in isolation? All were the spark of space and being, the talent of so many creators and the fruit of the research of scientists.

We, as a civilization have lost ourselves in the pursuit of the temporary high, the cult of happiness, instant gratification, gifted to us by the propaganda on endless commercial breaks and targeted algorithmic ads. Where do we have space to be human? I believe it’s out in the Stars but also within. After all, we are made of star stuff. We are a mirror to the wider universe, a fractal of knowing.

We need room for our imaginations and wonder in order to grow again. We need to value those who help us create the space for curiosity and creativity. There is so much space in the nature of our own existence, so much to the nature of our own magnificent mind. Space is everywhere.

I don’t know if sending more people into space will solve these issues, but I do know that exploration drives human ingenuity. We must however be careful of the mistakes of the past, and remember the horrors and wrongs we committed when exploring our own world, and the endless suffering that we caused to indigenous people. If we let greed be our guide again, we will continue the cycle among the stars.

I believe we can do better. We are worlds, within worlds, within worlds. Not only is our planet full of life, death, growth, and change, so too are our bodies, our minds, our hearts and even our perception. We ourselves are an epic tale of triumph and failure. I believe that we are at a turning point in our species. We can choose to continue down the path of greed and selfishness, or we can turn in, recognize the meaningless that we have created though our missteps, shift our goals, and then explore the final frontier within and without.

Anthropology, Mindfulness, and Navigating Turbulent Times (HPSfAA Spring Conference 2021)

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Last weekend the High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology had it’s annual spring conference. We had lots of wonderful presentations. All of the talks will be available shortly on YouTube (all are currently uploading) at this link.

My presentation is more of an open conversation about the relationship between studying and working in the field of Anthropology intermixed with mindfulness. You can find my presentation, titled Anthropology, Mindfulness, and Navigating Turbulent Times, here.